Automobile accidents account for thousands of untimely deaths in the United States every year. In an effort to curtail the number of deaths caused by automobile accidents, inventors have exerted great effort to develop various devices for minimizing the risk of death or serious injury which may occur during an automobile crash on highways and bridges.
Safety concerns have also prompted automobile manufacturers to exert large amounts of time and money to minimize the risk of injury to the occupants of automobiles. In this regard, automobile manufacturers have installed air bags and anti-lock brakes as optional or standard features in many types of vehicles. These types of safety features are particularly expensive because of the high costs of research and design and the continued expense associated with incorporating such safety features in each and every vehicle sold.
State governmental agencies, such as the Department of Transportation, have been established by each state to promulgate rules and regulations and to oversee new construction and work done on existing highways and bridges to assure that same are sufficiently safe for use by the public. One particularly preferred and approved means used to increase the safety of highways and bridges include the use of "jersey barriers". These barriers have proven to be effective at reducing the number of head-on crashes and other serious automobile accidents. The use of jersey barriers are also know to be effective at minimizing injury to occupants of an automobile and reducing damage to the automobile if it should happen to veer off of the roadway into such barriers.
The structural specifications of jersey barriers including the manner in which they are interconnected is also governed by the Department of Transportation in each state that requires the use of jersey barriers. In this regard, the Department of Transportation has an interest in assuring that the various components of a jersey barrier system are properly secured together.
A jersey barrier wall system generally includes a plurality of similarly sized jersey barriers, each having a first end including female receptacles and a second end including a plurality of fixed pins extending therefrom. The fixed pins are arranged in alignment with corresponding female receptacles of an adjacent jersey barrier when the individual components are placed in assembled position to obtain an end-to-end configuration. The individual jersey barrier components are thus secured against movement in a lateral direction relative to each other. When jersey barriers are used to partition adjacent lanes of a highway from each other, it is required to provide a certain number of specially sized jersey barrier components to customize the particular barrier system to fill gaps in the barrier wall caused by the specific placement of barrier components over obstacles such as catch basins, and the like. The specially sized components are known as closure pieces.
Catch basins are necessary to permit water to run off certain highways during storms without accumulating thereon and causing hazardous or impossible driving conditions. It is therefore important to prevent catch basins from becoming clogged due to debris, which may be washed off of a highway during a storm. In order to address this potential problem, specially cast jersey barrier components, including a "throat" section adjacent the center of the bottom of the barrier components, are utilized. The throat section is simply a cut out section which will permit water and relatively small objects to pass therethrough. Thus, when a throat section of a jersey barrier component is placed adjacent a catch basin, water is permitted to freely drain into the catch basin. In order to assure proper placement and alignment of the throat section over the corresponding catch basin, it is usually required to place the jersey barrier component including such throat section in its intended position over the catch basin prior to placement of other jersey barrier components into assembled position. In most circumstances, the jersey barrier components which have throat sections therein are of a "standard" size, i.e., similar in size to the other barrier components of the jersey barrier system.
Although the distance between catch basins on a highway may vary, many highways include catch basins spaced at predetermined intervals such as approximately 250 feet. When jersey barrier systems are assembled in accordance with the method discussed above, a gap having a length less than the length of the standard sized barrier components is often left in the barrier wall at some location within the area extending between the spaced catch basins. For instance, after placing a series of twenty foot jersey barriers to fill the area between the spaced catch basins, eventually a gap smaller than twenty feet will exist. Since this gap is too small to accommodate a standard sized twenty foot jersey barrier component, it is necessary to measure the specific distance of the gap and to custom cast a closure piece to fill the gap so that the jersey barrier system is continuous.
The Department of Transportation in all or most states require that the jersey barrier system be continuous as the exposure of blunt ends is dangerous and may result in serious injury or an accident if an automobile should crash into same. Thus, it is important to fill the gaps with closure pieces to assure that the jersey barrier system is continuous and that no blunt ends of the individual jersey barrier components are exposed along the highway to be partitioned.
Accordingly, after taking measurements of those areas which require specially sized and/or shaped jersey barriers (i.e., closure pieces), the closure pieces are cast according to the customized specifications. Since the jersey barrier wall system must be continuous, the length of each of the closure pieces must closely correspond to the length of the open space that needs to be blocked off. Thus, the usual manner of interconnecting aligned fixed pins with female receptacles of adjacent jersey barriers cannot be used for closure pieces which need to be placed between two existing jersey barriers in a closely sized relationship with respect to the open gap.
In the past, attempts to overcome the problem of securing closure pieces to adjacent sections of the jersey barrier wall system were made by cutting off the fixed pins from one of the adjacent jersey barrier sections and thereafter sliding the closure piece into its proper position. Extensive drilling through the solid concrete components of the jersey barrier system was then required. Steel plates were then used to secure the closure piece to adjacent jersey barriers by placing bolts through apertures in steel plates and the aligned holes that were drilled to extend through the jersey barriers. This process of connecting closure pieces to adjacent jersey barriers was and is quite time consuming and expensive.
The present invention overcomes the aforementioned shortcomings by providing a pinning system for use with prefabricated barriers, such as jersey barriers, wherein the pinning system includes plurality of slideably moveable elongate pins which can be selectively moved into aligned female receptacles to obtain lateral securement of closure pieces with respect to adjacent sections of a prefabricated barrier.